Books: The End of Kentucky

Cried a woman: "Thar's a burnin' mountain in the sky. Hit looks like a
hillside on fire when ye burn a clearin' in the spring."

Cried the Reverend John Whetstone: "It's only an aurora borealis." But
most people in the Kentucky mountain town of Blakesburg were terrified.
They had never seen or heard of an aurora borealis. Mountain-born and
Bible-bred, they thought that the apocalyptic spasms of light which
possessed their night sky meant the End of Time. They acted
accordingly.